I have far too many pumpkins now, so I found a recipe to make pumpkin chutney. I have amended it somewhat for our own tastes and I didn’t have any fresh ginger so I used dried.
Ingredients:
half a pumpkin diced
1 cooking apple (cored peeled & diced)
1 small red onion (diced)
1 teaspoon ginger
1 tbs mustard seeds
pinch cayenne pepper
400ml distilled vinegar
200g soft brown sugar
1 tbs salt
Put all ingredients except sugar & salt in a preserving pan, mix well, bring to the boil & simmer for up to 30 mins until the pumpkin has softened but still has a little bite to it. Add the sugar & salt stirring until dissolved; simmer until chutney has reduced to the thickness you are looking for. Bottle as usual.
So these little fellas are my Futsu pumpkins. I bought the seeds from The Organic Catalogue, and in the photo the pumpkin looked a lovely shade of golden brown. But, as you can see, this is a far cry from what we have here. How did this mutation happen? - you might ask. This is what I asked myself when the fruits began to form. So I did some research online and found that the seeds are a Japanese Black Futsu that looks like this now but when it ripens in storage should look like this. It says on the site, “This scarce, black Japanese squash with a flattened top, and heavily ribbed, round shape turns a rich chestnut color while in storage.” They are certainly not scarce on mtp - I have around 10 still to harvest!
Recipe: Stuffed Futsu Pumpkin
2 Futsu pumpkins
1 small red onion
1 clove garlic
pinch of cumin
pinch of cinnamon
cous cous soaked in veg stock
tablespoon of dried cranberries
1 cooking apple
30g of pine nuts
herbs (your choice, I did Chives)
juice of one lemon
Cut off the top of the pumpkins, and scoop out seeds to create a deep bowl. Brush with oil and roast for 25 mins or until tender. Meanwhile, fry onion garlic, add cranberries, apple and pine nuts and cous cous. Add herbs and spices, and season with lemon, salt and pepper. Pile into pumpkin bowls, top with cheese (if you like), replace the lid and cook for 10 mins. Eat!
Yes I know, I’ve been incommunicardo for the last few weeks. I blame the evils of work and my over-demanding boss (no wait, I work for myself, doh!). Well, whatever the reason, I’m back. I’ve been a-harvesting this week. The last of the raspberries are in and the purple French beans are just dying down. But the pride of mtp this year has to be the pumpkins and squash. Maybe it’s just me but I find them really easy to grow. I just put the plants in and they did the rest. I hardly watered them at all and yet I have harvested around 10 butternut squashes (from one plant). The Uchiki Kuri triffid is still pumping out fruits and even though the Futsu pumpkins look nothing like they are supposed to, I have been reasured (by extensive Google research) that they will turn golden brown in storage. As you see in the picture I did manage to harvest some of the strawberry sweetcorn that I planted earlier in the year. The yield was disappointing - only two cobs per plants, if that. The cobs are very small and fat which is I guess the shape sweetcorn used to be before F1 varieties. We plan to use it to make pink popcorn but with only 6 cobs in the bag we won’t be growing fat on it. I’m not sure what went wrong. Maybe, yields are just small with Heirloom varieites. Anyone know?
